As of 1st February 2024 Google will put in place several new requirements of those sending emails to Google based email accounts. In effect all businesses that send emails to Google based email accounts will have to implement these changes to ensure their emails will get through and will not either be deleted or put in the ‘Spam’ folder.

Google is doing this to reduce the amount of spam being sent to their email customers and to improve general email security.

So what are the changes? have a look a here . Below I have take a screen shot of the changes and underlined what I think is the key change.

For those not in the know, SPF and DKIM email authentication are two entries added to your domain record that stop hackers pretending to be you when sending emails. SPF lists what machines on the internet are allowed to send as emails as you. DKIM adds a digital signature to your outgoing emails, allowing a receiver to check that signature and verify that the email is indeed from you and it hasn’t been modified in flight through the internet.

If you want to check if your domain is set up correctly, I suggest you use dmarcly.com/tools/ Just enter your domain (the text on the right hand side of the ‘@’ in your email address) into the SPF Checker and the DKIM Checker. If they both come back finding valid entries, there is nothing more you need to do. But if they come back as missing, this means from February 1st your emails might fail to get through to those using Google Email – if so, please contact your IT support to get this fixed, or if you are technically minded use the SPF Record Generator and DKIM Record Generator on the dmarcyl.com site, along with knowledge of your email set up and whom can send emails as you to correctly configure this.

The DKIM change will require your email programs to be set up to sign all your emails, this can be quite an involved process.